"Even if we ignore economic interests and political positions, from a purely religious and moral point of view, can we bear to stand idly by and watch those who are forced into exile in order to earn a living? Don't forget, long before the liberation of the Far East, we were also exiles who fled the interior of the empire, and our ancestors also walked through that difficult path of exile to survive! Since the independence of the Far East, we have been given a place in this land blessed by the goddess Sindra, can we ruthlessly close the path we have traveled, shut out the exiles behind us, who are also desperate for a foothold, and watch millions of living beings die in despair? No, my faith does not allow me to sit idly by! ”

……

Roland's impassioned declaration in the broadcast studio made the tens of millions of people who listened to this program before the radio feel the radiance of the fraternity of the goddess of fate, and at the same time were deeply moved by the noble personality of His Royal Highness the Prince.

People who were originally worried about immigrants listened to this episode, and they couldn't help but feel ashamed and reflect on their prejudices; The exiles, who had just found a place to live, were moved to tears, and they had a good impression of the government of Kolas and the faith of Sindra. After the broadcast, there was a strong and lasting wave of "conversion" among the immigrant army, with the vast majority of exiles choosing to abandon their original faith and convert to the Church of Sindra – the voters of Pero forced them to go into exile, and the voters of Sindra gave them a place to stay.

In addition to the statements made publicly in the "fireside chat", Roland's insistence on opening the country to the flow of immigrants is actually inconvenient for the public to say.

With the rapid development of the economy in the Far East, the value of industrial output has increased tenfold in just four years, and it has surpassed agriculture to become the first pillar of the national economy. The rapid expansion of industry requires more industrial workers, but the shortage of labor in the Far East has further exacerbated the labor shortage, which is intuitively reflected in the fact that the average wage of industrial workers has quadrupled in four years, but it is still difficult to recruit people.

As wages continue to rise, the cost of industrial goods will grow in tandem, and the export market will gradually lose competitiveness. The Far East is still an export-oriented economy, and if industrial products lose their price advantage and cannot continue to expand their share in the international market, the country's millions of people alone will not be able to absorb the huge industrial capacity, and the economy will also go into depression.

In such a dire situation, Roland proposed two parallel strategies. First, high wages will incentivize business owners to invest more in technology research and development, replacing expensive labor with more advanced and efficient machines, thereby providing the impetus for technological innovation.

In the 19th century, American workers were among the most paid in the world in terms of experience on Earth, and it was expensive labor that forced factory owners to focus on developing and applying new technologies that would generate more than offset the cost of research and development, thus becoming the leaders of the Second Industrial Revolution. However, transplanting the same development path to East Asia will not work. Because of the large population and low labor cost, it is completely possible to use cheap labor to replace machines, on the contrary, the cost of developing new technologies is too high compared to manual labor, and does not conform to the law of comparative advantage.

After the completion of the first five-year plan in the Far East, the national economy is at a critical turning point. The surge in labor costs is both a good thing and a bad thing, and the key depends on how the rulers and business owners deal with it.

Roland has taken advantage of the current opportunity to take the innovation and upgrading of magic industrial technology as the current primary industrial policy, which is led and vigorously promoted by the government. Under the pressure of labor shortage, business owners will not have too much resistance to new technologies, but take the initiative to invest in technology research and development, hoping that the application of new technologies can reduce labor and bring more profits.

On the other hand, Roland did not miss the opportunity brought about by the radical reforms carried out by the imperial authorities, absorbing a large number of immigrants from the interior of the empire, so as to replenish the urgently needed labor force in the Far East, slightly alleviate the pressure caused by rising wages, and buy more time for industrial upgrading.

According to the national economic statistics of the first quarter of 1624, the two policies of "technological innovation" and "absorption of immigrants" have achieved excellent results, but as the situation in the empire deteriorated, Roland also realized that the good times of peaceful development could not be sustained, and it was necessary to prepare for the coming "troubled times".

……

Out of personal interest and academic needs, Roland read many treatises reflecting on and discussing the "French Revolution" before traveling, and the one that left the deepest impression on him was Tocqueville's masterpiece "The Ancien Régime and the Revolution".

The year 1624 could not have been worse for the rulers of the Assanian Empire. After a full year of radical reforms, the historic empire has been tossed and shaken. In Roland's view, the current situation of the Assanian Empire is quite similar to that of France before the Revolution of 1789, as Tocqueville pointed out:

Revolutions do not always break out in countries with the most severe oppression, but often in countries that are relatively tolerant, or have shifted to tolerance. A sealed pressure cooker is high pressure but safe, but once the gap is opened to allow the high-pressure gas to get a vent channel that is too narrow, it will cause an explosion!

"Spring" is often associated with beauty and hope in literature, but spring in the Assanian Empire is a different story, and in this season of greenery, the poor peasants in the countryside are always worried about famine.

In the spring of previous years, the villagers who had run out of food at home had two options: either they could ask the local landlords or noble lords for alms, or drag their families to escape the famine, begging wherever they went, and there was really no food, and the bark and wild vegetables on the roadside could barely satisfy their hunger.

In the spring of 1624, unlike anything else, the rural society familiar to the poor had been swept away by a wave of reform from above. Now the landlords in the countryside have either gone bankrupt and sold their farmland in blocks and moved their families to the cities to settle down, replacing them with state-owned farms.

The state farms are nominally owned by the state, but the "state" cannot manage its land itself and can only delegate it to managers. In the first place, these field managers have no right to give food to the poor from the state-owned farms, not to mention that most of them are hard-hearted, not only do they not want to give to the poor, but they also want to take advantage of the famine season to get the poor into the farms they manage to work as laborers. Although the countrymen are not educated, they are not stupid, and they have long heard of the tragic plight of state-owned farm workers.

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